


Seeing Through Another's Mind

by Cookies_and_Chaos



Category: The Bletchley Circle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:27:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28758807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cookies_and_Chaos/pseuds/Cookies_and_Chaos
Summary: People were always curious about just how Lucy's mind worked. Written for the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge 2020, Day 10, "Ten Important Thoughts".
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: 12 Days of Christmas Challenge 2020





	Seeing Through Another's Mind

People were always curious how Lucy's mind worked. At least they were now that she had a place where thinking like she did was valued and considered important, instead of being something unnerving and worthy of disapproval. Lucy had slowly learnt to change her explanation to match what she knew about the person who asked.

When Susan Gray asked, the first woman at Bletchley who did, fascinated by the way Lucy had reeled off coded messages she had read a week prior in their dozens, Lucy explained it using Susan's skills in maths. She likened it to how Susan always seemed to pull equations and formulas and ways to manipulate numbers from these vaults in the back of her mind and apply them without so much as a blink of an eye. Just like Susan just _knew_ all that maths she had learnt, Lucy just remembered all those things she had read and heard. That somewhere she knew there were a thousand different things happening in her brain all at once but that the knowing of what what was exactly was beyond her.

Then when Jean McBrian had asked, Lucy had been more practical in her explanation. She likened it to record cards and photographs that she could access at any time as long as she had some idea of where she needed to look, like the Dewey decimal in a library guided readers to the book they needed, Lucy just needed something — a word, a sound — to guide her to her memories.

And when Millie Harcourt had asked, Lucy had explained that it was like having access to the minds of every lay person and expert she had ever spoken to or read books by at her disposal. That what they knew became a part of her memories and as long as she was paying attention, it was so firmly placed in there that she wouldn't forget it. No matter how many people spoke to her in the meantime. She'd just add their words on top too.

In truth, Lucy wasn't sure it was any of those things. It could have been all of them and a dozen more explanations for why she had the mind she did, why she thought the way she thought. It didn't really matter because the explanations weren't for her, they were for them. For Susan and Jean and Millie. They were for the people that made Lucy feel like she belonged for the first time in her life. So her words didn't need to explain everything, they just needed to explain enough.


End file.
